A few mornings later, back at Lewiston, I roll over and pull the clock closer so I can read it. Seven-thirty. Shit. I hustle into the kitchen, cleaning my glasses on the shirt I slept in.
“Morning, Kelly,” John says.
“Hi. Can I help with lunches?”
“Ta.” John is finally letting me take something over.
“Hi, Kelly,” Evan says, appearing behind me. It’s strange to see him at this hour. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. “Morning, John.”
John turns to face his stepson. “Good morning, Evan.”
“I checked on Pop,” Evan reports, as if this is standard family procedure. “He’s up. In his chair.”
“I’ll look in on him,” John says. “Thanks.”
Evan glances at me on his way out of the kitchen, not touching the morning paper and offering no explanation for his untimely appearance.
While I finish the lunches, John goes outside to cut some blooms from the bushes out front. He brings in a large bouquet, hydrangea, I think, and ties it together with string.
Later, with the kids at school and John painting, I wait for Evan to come in for Santa Barbara, but he never does. For lack of anything better to do, I rearrange the cookbooks, balancing the skinny, tall spines with the squatter ones. I wipe down the windowsills and get going on the silverware drawer, removing all the knives, forks, and spoons to clean out their plastic beds. The drawer itself, inside and out, needs attention, which means all the drawers in the kitchen do, which in turn implicates the walls, the baseboards, the whole room. Rehabilitation is addictive. I bet this is why John paints all the time, drawn to work that carries the promise of daily progress and inevitable completion, living for the day he can stand back with his hands on his hips and say, “Our house was shabby and unkempt, and now look, it’s shipshape!”
Eventually, after reorganizing the pantry and wiping down each shelf with cleaner, I decide to make Toll House cookies. I have less than an hour before pickup, and I’d rather the house smell like a bakery than a hospital.
While the last batch bakes, I change my shirt, redo my ponytail, and rub some extra deodorant in my pits. There’s nothing happening with Mr. Graham, or apparently Evan either, but still, I have my pride.
“Okay, I’m heading out!” I call to John while I set the cookie tray on an extra oven mitt.
“No, no, I got it,” he says, stepping into the kitchen with a fresh shirt on and his hair combed, reminding me of the day I met him.
“I thought I’d get them so you could keep painting.”
“No more painting. Today, uh, today is Ellen’s birthday, so the kids and I are going to take her flowers.”
“Oh.” I stand upright.
“Martin wants to give her his pinwheel.”
“Of course. I’ll be here then.”
After John leaves, I lower myself into a chair and find that I’ve bowed my head and crossed my hands the way I used to in church after taking Communion. I picture Martin piercing the ground with his plastic pinwheel and Milly tilting a bouquet against her mother’s headstone. The words Dear God come to mind. That’s how I started all my petitions growing up, Dear God, like I was writing a letter from Camp Tockwogh. Nothing else comes to me after that, so I just say it again. Dear God. Dear God. I cover my mouth, looking over my knuckles, my eyes landing on a framed photo of the kids, determined not to cry, because who the hell am I to be crying? I don’t know anything. My mom is fine, right where I left her, waiting for me to come home and grow up, or come home grown up.
When the kids and John get back, I look them over for signs of grief—ruddy eyes, grass stains on their knees—but they seem the same.
“That was all right,” John says, sounding pleased.
“I’m so glad,” I say, happy that he’s happy, or happy-ish.
After dinner, John tells the kids they can sleep with him tonight, and as they dash to their room to get in pajamas, he leans back against the counter. “I think it really went well.”
I stop the faucet. “I’m so glad,” I repeat.
“Yeah,” he says, looking at the event from a distance, like a foreman surveying his construction project.
For a moment we stand there, still strangers, but friendly strangers, strangers who can share space, strangers who care, until the kids appear in the doorway ready for Daddy. Now that I understand what today is, I want to find Evan and make sure he knows that somebody is worrying over him, but he never comes in, and I suspect he’s working overtime at the store, stocking shelves and breaking down boxes like a madman, trying to hear the sound of his mother’s voice saying something perfect, something like I see you working so hard, honey, something like I’m here, I promise.